Each sheet of hanji is dyed in thousands of colors, dried in the sun, cut into layers, and rolled into seeds. When these seeds are planted on the canvas, paths are created, dragons fly, and hills rise. The multicolored seeds seem to come alive with light and time like living creatures. This is the story of Ilhwa Kim (b.1967), an artist who has been attracting international attention with her Seed Universe series.

“I haven’t exhibited in my home country for the past seven or eight years, so this will be a meaningful opportunity to showcase the results of the challenges I took on during the years and the experience I accumulated,” said Kim, who is bringing four new works to Kiaf this year.

“The countless seeds, made with my own hands, create a flow of hills and valleys. The contrast of color, light and shade, and the material of the paper create a solid object that responds to light with firmness and smoothness. They are reborn into living and moving objects. The innumerable colored seeds dramatically capture the passage of the seasons and become a “map of time.” It is also a personal record of the person looking at it, much like the tree that has stood in my yard for ten years, or my ten-year-old dog.”

Kim’s entries include Dragon Vs. Boy II, Tactile Tower, Remembrance, and Spectrum 5. The visual stimuli of the pieces evoke tactile sensation in viewers without physical touch, subtly revealing the themes in their titles. There is also an abstract concept in that the viewer can give different meanings to the pieces by looking at them from different angles.

“The bumpy surfaces of my work open their arms to embrace the empty space in which they are placed, and the seeds reach out to many people, not as static objects on the wall, but as trees or living structures that grow little by little each day. This is not something that I can achieve by trying to figure out how to infuse each piece with those qualities; it’s something that our trained survival senses instinctively pick up, through the anticipation of movement, the sense of lurking speed, and other qualities that we associate with these living things that you feel when we look at my work. It’s important that people sense the “aliveness” that they feel when they look at a plant or an animal in my work.”

Why does Kim continue to use hanji and paper materials in her work? She says, “I’ve been focusing on paper because it’s the most basic element of human civilization. I’ve recently started combining paper materials with metals, textiles, and paint, and I’m interested in the new dimensions they create.”